EL1 – Toyota takes control in Shanghai

The weather continues to be gloomy in Shanghai, and it could be like this all weekend. On a wet track, the best time in the first free practice session was set by Sébastien Buemi, at the wheel of the Toyota TS050 Hybrid n°8 which it shares with Fernando Alonso et Kazuki Nakajima. The Swiss, author of a lap in 1'54"768, is 1"5 ahead of the sister car entrusted to Mike conway-José Maria Lopez-Kamui Kobayashi and by 4”1 the BR1-AER n°17 ​​fielded by SMP Racing and led by Matevos Isaakyan, Egor Orudzhev and Stéphane Sarrazin.

The top five is completed by the ByKolles Racing Enso CLM P1/01-Nismo of Dillman-Rossiter-Webb and the No. 13 Rebellion R3-Gibson of Beche-Laurent-Menezes. Note that the #1 DragonSpeed ​​BR10-Gibson only completed five laps.

At home, Jackie Chan DC Racing is off to a good start to its weekend. By setting a 2'02"923, the No. 07 Oreca 37 of Jaafar-Jeffri-Tan dominated the session in LM P2. She is ahead of the Dallara P217 of Racing Team Nederland by De Vries-Van Eerd-Van der Garde and the Oreca 07 n°28 of TDS Racing on board which we find Loïc duval, Matthieu Vaxivière and François Perrodo. Signatech Alpine is seventh and last in his class.

In GTE Pro, BMW takes the lead thanks to the #8 M81 GTLM from Tomcyk-Catsburg in 2'09"830. Follow the Porsche 911 RSR n°91 from Bruni-Lietz and theAston Martin Vantage AMR #97 from Lynn-Martin. The first Ford GT, the No. 66 of Mücke Pla, is fifth while the Corvette C7.R of Gavin-Milner is 7th, just ahead of the fastest of the Ferrari 488 GTE, namely the n°51 of Calado-Pier Guidi.

Finally, in GTE Am, the reference brand is to the credit of the No. 8 Aston Martin V90 Vantage (TF Sport) of Adam-Eastwood-Yoluc, which beat the No. 911 Porsche 77 RSR of the championship leaders. , whose names are Julien Andlauer, Matt Campbell and Christian Ried.

The second free practice session is scheduled for 15:30 p.m. local time (8:30 a.m. French time).